Men and Women “See” the World Differently

The Gist

Men are from
Mars; Women are from Venus. He said; she said. Gender differences have
produced many popular sayings about how men and women perceive the
world. But new research published this week in PLoS ONE reveals that women and men literally look at the world in different ways.

Using
eye movement research methods, University of Bristol researchers
tracked where men and women looked while viewing film stills and pieces
of art. They found that women made fewer eye movements than men, and
that they were longer and to more varied locations.

Specifically,
researchers showed study participants images of heterosexual couples,
and both men and women preferred looking at the female figure rather
than the male one. While men were only interested in the faces of the
two figures, women's eyes were also drawn to the rest of the bodies—in
particular those of the female figures.

Eye movement research
collects visual information, offering insights about how people perceive
the world. When individuals have different interpretations of the
world, this affects the information they seek and, consequently, the
places they look. This new research suggests that men and women look at
different things because they interpret the world and others around them
in different ways.

The Expert Take

While
men and women may live in the same environment, what they see in this
environment is reliably different, according to the authors.

“The
study represents the most compelling evidence yet that, despite
occupying the same world, the viewpoints of men and women can, at times,
be very different,” lead author Felix Mercer Moss, a Ph.D. student in
the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, said in
a press release. “Our findings have important implications for both
past and future eye movement research, together with future
technological applications.”

The Takeaway

Gender differences in perception offer great insights into the lived experiences of men and women.

While
men made direct eye contact with faces in the pictures, especially when
primed to look for a threat, women averted their gaze downward
slightly, toward the nose and mouth.

The researchers say this may
be caused by women being more sensitive to the negative consequences of
making direct eye contact. So, they have adapted their behavior to
reflect this social norm—shifting their gazes downward.

Source and Method

The
study authors examined the fixation distributions of 52 women and men
while viewing 80 natural images, and found systematic differences in
their spatial and temporal characteristics.

Other Research

Another recent study
involving eye movement research found that looking just below the eyes
is optimal for facial recognition tasks. University of California Santa
Barbara researchers determined that maintaining good eye contact carries
significant social value and allows for the extraction of information
about gaze direction.

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